Christian Aid vs CAFOD — charity comparison
In short: Christian Aid: Poverty reduction, rights and essential services. CAFOD: Catholic international development and emergency relief. Match the work to your purpose, then compare dated accounts and evidence.
Data from Charity Commission register, last updated .
This comparison brings together registered purposes, source-checked interpretation and the accounts held by CharityCompare. The organisations may use different reporting periods and definitions. Read the source notes before comparing totals or treating a financial score as an assessment of programme results.
Key differences
| What to compare | CHRISTIAN AID | CATHOLIC AGENCY FOR OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Registered work and operating model | Poverty reduction, rights and essential services. | Catholic international development and emergency relief. |
| What to consider | The register emphasises structural causes of poverty alongside practical support. Assess partner programmes and policy work with appropriate evidence, including the charity’s contribution within collaborations. | CAFOD combines community development, emergencies and advocacy. Financial comparisons should recognise partner delivery and long-term work as well as emergency outputs. |
| Access and practical checks | Verify the named programme and receiving entity on the official website. Country coverage and appeal restrictions should be checked at programme level. | Use the official appeal and programme information to confirm purpose and any restrictions. Check the receiving registration when an appeal is organised locally. |
| Sourced result or evidence gap | No programme outcome has been source-checked for this profile. This is a gap in our coverage, not evidence of no impact. | No programme outcome has been source-checked for this profile. This is a gap in our coverage, not evidence of no impact. |
What the latest filings show
Figures from the accounts held in our dated dataset; the live register may contain newer filings. Ratios can span multiple years, as labelled. Clarity scores use our methodology.
| Metric | CHRISTIAN AID | CATHOLIC AGENCY FOR OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Latest accounts year in our snapshot | 2025 | 2025 |
| Financial snapshot refreshed | 2026-09-06 | 2026-09-06 |
| Ratio reporting window | 3-yr avg | 3-yr avg |
| Overall score | 80/100 (4★) | 66/100 (3★) |
| Accountability & Finance | 100/100 | 75/100 |
| Spend on charitable activities | 84% of expenditure | 88% of expenditure |
| Fundraising efficiency | £6.2 total income per £1 fundraising (2023–2025, disclosed years) | £8.0 total income per £1 fundraising (2023–2025, disclosed years) |
| Latest income | £71m | £56m |
| Fundraising spend | 16% of expenditure | 12% of expenditure |
| Reserves | 2 months | 1 month |
| Accounts filing | On time | Late |
| Data confidence | high | medium |
| Charity number | 1105851 | 1160384 |
CHRISTIAN AID on the register · CATHOLIC AGENCY FOR OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT on the register
Considering Christian Aid
- Poverty reduction, rights and essential services.
- Verify the named programme and receiving entity on the official website. Country coverage and appeal restrictions should be checked at programme level.
Considering CAFOD
- Catholic international development and emergency relief.
- Use the official appeal and programme information to confirm purpose and any restrictions. Check the receiving registration when an appeal is organised locally.
Common questions
Christian Aid or CAFOD: which should I support?
There is no universal winner. Poverty reduction, rights and essential services. Catholic international development and emergency relief. Check the programme that interests you, the accounts period and the evidence behind any result. A financial rating is not an impact assessment.
Can I compare the headline results directly?
Only if the definitions, population, geography and reporting periods match. Research expenditure, service contacts and lasting outcomes measure different things. The source notes explain any figures included here.
How we score charities +
The Clarity Score is a 100-point rating from UK regulator filings (Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR and CCNI). Four pillars — Accountability & Transparency (40), Financial Health (30), Financial Efficiency (20), and Community Support (10) — each scored on a continuous scale, not pass/fail cutoffs. A statutory inquiry sets the score to 0 automatically.
Accountability & Transparency
Scored from filings
40 points — filing history (15), trustee oversight (15, scaling up to a board of three or more), declared policies (10).
Financial Health
Scored from filings
30 points — reserves (15, full marks 3–24 months, tapering on both sides), income stability (10), liabilities to assets (5, scaling down as debt rises).
Financial Efficiency
Scored from filings
20 points — program expense ratio and fundraising cost, each on a graduated scale (not a single cutoff). Kept at 20% of the total: financial-ratio scoring alone is not a reliable effectiveness signal (see "why not just an overhead ratio?" below).
Community Support
Scored from filings
10 points — volunteer-to-staff ratio from Charity Commission workforce data, scaling continuously up to a 2:1 ratio.
Overall score
Sum of all pillar points. Display stars use the same bands as the labels: 90–100 → 5★ Exceptional; 75–89 → 4★ Good; 60–74 → 3★ Needs improvement; 1–59 → 2★ Poor; 0 → not rated.